The Good, The Bad, and The Weird

I think that the last time I wrote I was still feeling overwhelmed by the oppressive heat both inside and outside the apartment. Smog and dust and heat and a very small apartment with no air conditioning made it really difficult to do much more than the bare minimum. This is my lame excuse for not posting sooner. I don’t know if we’re just having a little break, or if I’ve just witnessed the fastest switch of seasons ever, but Thursday night the cooler air came in and on Friday we had a beautiful, bright, clear day, crisp (still warm but with a definite autumnal edge) and smelling of fall. Since then we’ve had rain, wind, and more blue sky, but the extreme heat hasn’t returned. Yet. I’m sure I’m jumping the gun but gosh, a nice long drawn-out autumn sounds pretty good right now.

To celebrate the end of Dave’s teaching week (two seminars on American history to junior faculty) and the incredibly beautiful day, we visited Da Zhao on Friday, originally Hohhot’s largest lamasery (think, monastery), and now a prayer hall and tourist attraction. It’s a beautiful collection of small buildings surrounded by walls, originally built in 1579 but currently undergoing extensive renovations, complete with a shopping mall under construction in a similar architectural design, opposite the main entrance. For some reason not entirely clear to me, Tibetan Buddhism hopped over most of China and made a deep impression in Inner Mongolia. This temple is full of scary deities, “heaven/hell” type scenes, dragons, many many statues of Buddha and long frescoes surrounding the main prayer hall.

Outside Da Zhao

Incense burning in foreground, prayer hall behind.

A meditation hall. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the prayer hall.

It’s a beautiful place but Grace especially got spooked and didn’t like being there. Samuel liked the many gift shops lining the entry way—he has developed a passion for shopping that freaks me out. I can’t tell if he’s trying to become a super-consumer, or just trying to assuage his feelings of homesickness by accumulating touristy junk. It’s funny, though, to be in a Buddhist temple and have Samuel wanting to acquire more things; but then again, he’s never claimed to be a Buddhist, he’s just a homesick American kid. We did escape without buying anything.

There is a street just off the temple (I wonder if it will still be in business when the fancy shopping mall opens up?) that we wandered up, full of all kinds of gee-gaws and junk, but apparently an expensive tourist-trap type of street, complete with pickpockets, if we are to believe the slightly weird New Zealander Dave spoke with there.

Tourist street

There not being too many foreigners in town, when we see one we act just like the Chinese and gawk. Dave struck up a conversation and the long and the short of it is that maybe this guy might think the world is coming to an end, maybe the US is some kind of “planned with a purpose” country and who knows what else. Dave didn’t exchange phone numbers with him, anyway. I bring this guy up for a couple of reasons, not just filler, really: first, it’s eye-opening to realize how much we not only thirst for a conversation with someone—anyone-- since we are generally limited to a few choice phrases like, "Hi”, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”, “I’m from America.”, “I don’t speak Chinese.” It’s hard to have any kind of meaningful interaction on such a limited repertoire.; but also because now we were the gawkers, saying “Look! A foreigner! Quick, let’s go talk to him!” I think that when we’re back home the culture shock may simply be this: we won’t be unique anymore and frankly, that will be a relief.

Friday evening Kun Kun’s mother Betty invited us to the musical fountain in town. I regret that I have no idea what the name of the fountain is, much less the plaza, or even exactly how to get there—how’s that for accuracy in reporting? My excuse is that we rode the bus to this park on the east side of town and I totally lost my bearings. It took us 45 minutes on a squashed bus (I mean, we passengers were squashed, not the bus itself, although that does generate a funny picture to muse over), when we could have 1) taken a taxi or 2) rode our bikes, both in a fraction of the time it took. But again, we were invited and it was her call how we got there. The kids played in a park a short distance away from the plaza, as dusk came on. It was such a spectacularly beautiful day, and the coming of evening was just as lovely.

Along the Canal

We walked along a canal on the way to the plaza and spied a crazy frog swimming in it. I say crazy because he was huge, maybe 8-10 inches when stretched out, and he would stop swimming to peer up at us, just as we peered down at him. A policeman on a bike stopped and just like us, was mesmerized by this frog. We all gazed down at him in the growing dark and maybe it was just a trick of the light, but its face looked almost monkey-like, with eyes in front and a little mouth that formed an “O” as it looked at us. Was this some kind of mutant frog, we wondered, or a new species? Dave couldn’t get a picture of him, so now we will never know. Maybe we could’ve become famous with our discovery of the first-ever frog-monkey. What a waste of an almost 15 minutes of fame.

As Betty kept saying, the fountain is the largest fountain in all of North China. It’s placed in the canal and I couldn’t even tell you how long it is, but it’s big, and shortly after 8 p.m. (it is very dark by 8 now) the music started up, jets of water shooting up, and lights fanned through the water, creating all kinds of shapes, both on the water and even onto the skyscrapers behind us. I had Grace up on my shoulders so she could see, Dave took many pictures, Betty stayed near us, and Kun Kun and Samuel played like maniacs, running and wrestling and doing “kung fu” and who knows what else. Just being crazy boys. The funny thing is that there was a guy there with his camera/phone, and he spent more time photographing Grace and me than the fountain. Like I said, we’re going to be a staple in many a Chinese photo album. He completely ignored his little old mom and wife, so busy was he collecting an even more interesting attraction than northern China’s largest musical fountain. By 9:00 I convinced Betty that because Grace was so tired (kids are a great excuse sometimes) I would really prefer to take a taxi home, our treat. Miraculously, we got our way. I think it’s a first and I really don’t think she minded, as they had a long bike ride home afterwards.

We got home very late, put the kids to bed and dropped off ourselves. Dave and Samuel went to Helin the next morning very early for Dave to teach the kids English. I won’t go into great details about this except to say that two very interesting situations occurred. First, for Grace and me. We went to Weiduoli to do some grocery shopping. As I have said before, Weiduoli supermarket is in the basement of a huge, multi-story mall. I picked out some nice towels, some lovely cockroach hotels (gag—would never do this at home, but then, at home I don’t live in fear of being infested with cockroaches, only the occasional mouse), some peanut butter, etc. when suddenly the lights in the back part of the store went out. Okay, I think, this happens sometimes, I shouldn’t worry. But then I see that the bazillion shop attendants (there are no kidding three ladies to each aisle, plus three at each little sale island at the end of each aisle—they stand around a lot and hassle shoppers or, in our case, stare) are looking up at the ceiling and there is a security guard type guy talking into a walkie-talkie (do they still call them that or am I being quaint and antiquated?). Not speaking or understanding Chinese, I start to get a bad feeling. I notice that there are no exits anywhere near me, that I am in the basement far from the one escalator exit, and that there are no sprinklers on the ceilings as one would normally find in every store back home. I start to smell something burning. I gaze longingly at the green onion pancakes and bao tze in the deli counter not far from me, I glance down at my cockroach hotels that I really really want, and then I look up one more time. Ah, flames shooting out of a fat electrical wire. Okay, that decided everything. I left my cart, grabbed Grace, and made a bee-line for the escalator. While Grace started to panic because she didn’t know what was going on, I marched us up the escalator, past the cosmetics (just like any department store, jewelry and cosmetics on the first floor), out the doors and into a cab waiting in front. We went straight home.

Most of you know that I am an organization freak and sometimes this gets me into trouble. Like, when I have planned that the day is going to go like this: go to Weiduoli, buy cockroach hotels and lunch (the aforementioned green onion pancakes and bao tze), come home, set out the hotels and eat lunch, plan dinner for when the guys come home from Helin; and then this doesn’t happen and I am immobilized. Of course, we were both a little upset by our experience, too. We came home, ate a snack, and I tried to think of what we could do for lunch and dinner. About 11:30 I started to wonder why I hadn’t heard from Dave yet, especially as I had text-messaged him about the Weiduoli situation and expected he would write back pretty soon. [Aside: Yes, we had to come all the way to China to learn how to text message. Everyone does this rather than pay for a phone call. We have found that it is actually preferable to a phone call because while many of our new acquaintances speak some English, it is very hard to have a clear conversation in English on the phone.] Anyway, I broke down and called, because I figured he’d be at lunch by then. Dave answered right away, rather subdued, I thought, and it finally came out that he was at the police station. Actually let me rephrase that: he was at the POLICE STATION. Apparently he had been talked into a second class, which he was in the middle of teaching, when the police showed up and whisked him and Joe (the interpreter and fellow English teacher) off to the police station. I will not go into details, as he will post all about it (yes, he now has a blog: www.hohhotchronicles.blogspot.com) but I will say this: Samuel was off playing with some kids and Dave didn’t get to see him before going, Dave spent THREE (no need to rephrase) hours at the station filling out paperwork and being repeatedly fingerprinted, and ultimately paid 200 yuan (about $26) for the crime of being a foreigner without his passport. It really is a good story in retrospect. I am sure he will post soon, so keep an eye out for it. Anyway, Samuel did remarkably well for not knowing where his dad was for so long and for being entirely surrounded for 3 hours by people who don’t speak English (he now has one of our phrasebooks that he swears he will carry with him always). It was very nerve-wracking for me and I didn’t have to deal with it personally. It apparently boils down to a situation of corrupt small-town cops with nothing better to do than harass foreigners and extort money, much like what happens when you are stopped by the Mexican police while minding your own business and have to pay a heavy fine for no apparent reason other than that you are a foreigner (a “rich” American in that case). The silver lining is that Dave has wanted to get out of teaching in Helin and now he has the best of excuses not to go back. I know that Lily and Joe and everyone at the school feels horribly embarrassed and very sorry that it happened, but we are glad to be done with Helin.

We went back to Weiduoli today (Sunday) and saw that it is still standing, so I guess they found a fire extinguisher somewhere. Anyway, I now have cockroach hotels strategically placed all over the apartment and we got our green onion pancakes and bao tze after all.